X's difficulty is Y's opportunity

I have been thinking again recently about the attitude of people I have encountered who believe that there is no limit to the means that can be employed to bring down a system they hate (often but not always the USA). In addition I have been reminded a small news story from December 2004 concerning the decapitation of a statue in Dublin, ostensibly by anti fascist campaigners.

The statue in question was of Sean Russell, the IRA Chief of Staff from 1938 to 1940, a man who was willing to collaborate with the Third Reich in pursuit of his ends

In April 1940 Russell made his way to Germany under the auspices German Military Intelligence to receive training in sabotage and guerrilla warfare. While there he had access to senior Nazis including Joachim Von Ribbentrop and following the fall of France, he was able to persuade the German high command to make use of the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern Ireland as part of a general attack on Britain. His plans were accepted and Russell set off to Ireland to in August 1940 by U Boat. Within 100 miles of the coast of Western Ireland he died and was buried at sea with full naval honours

Apologists have explained his collaboration with Nazi Germany as just another example of an Irish nationalist taking to heart the old maxim “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” and that the IRA was not and never had been a pro Nazi organisation.

While the IRA may have opposed O’Duffy’s Blueshirts (fascist wannabes) during the 1930s the tone of IRA propaganda during WWII was very pro Nazi. In July 1940 for example, the IRA made a statement which made it clear that if ‘German forces should land in Ireland, they would land . . . as friends and liberators of the Irish people’. The public was assured that Germany desired neither ‘territory nor . . . economic penetration’ in Ireland but only that it should play its part in the ‘reconstruction’ of a ‘free and progressive Europe’. The Third Reich was also praised as the ‘energising force’ of European politics and the ‘guardian’ of national freedom

Also in 1940 Sinn Féin leader J.J. O’Kelly was praising Hitler for freeing Germany from the ‘heel’ of the ‘Jewish white slave traffic’.

Anyone who even takes a cursory interest in history or politics will know that this sort of unholy alliance happens time and time and time again. Even Avraham Stern of the notorious Stern Gang allegedly offered to “actively take part in the war on Germany's side" if it were to end British rule in Palestine. Even so one must question the mindset of those who will get into bed with evil or support evil to advance their cause.

Perhaps one day people will act differently but I won’t hold my breath. More of the same or similar will almost certainly follow in subsequent posts.

useful links

News report on the beheading of the statue in the Times

Wikipedia biography of Sean Russell

Here's to Adolph Hitler IRA and the Nazis. Brian Hanley, History Ireland Vol13, no 3. May/June 2005